This invention relates to a hand-held tufted carpet mender and more particularly to such a mender having a needle which may be shifted laterally for forming laterally offset stitches.
In the manufacture of tufted carpet when a defect caused by the failure of a tufting machine needle to tuft a loop into the backing material occurs, as when the needle unthreads or the strand of yarn fed to the needle is broken, the carpet is mended by means of a hand-held mender known in the art as a mending gun. An operator standing behind the tufting machine inspects the fabric as it leaves the tufting machine and if a defect is sighted, the mending gun is activated to repair the defect. Such a mending gun is pneumatically powered to reciprocate a needle into and out of the tufted fabric at the location of the missing loops of yarn and a strand of yarn is constantly fed to the needle.
This apparatus functions extremely well when a longitudinal row of stitches that normally would be inserted by a needle are missing from the carpet fabric. However, a substantial amount of carpet is produced when the needles of the tufting machine are shifted laterally so that each needle forms a zig-zag back stitch, or where patterns are produced having back stitches which may be laterally offset by more than one step. A fabric of the former type may also be created by laterally shifting the backing material relative to the needles or by using the process disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,440,102. In such cases when a yarn tuft is not formed by a needle, the mending gun operator must move the mending gun from side-to-side in zig-zag and other fashions in order to mend the defect, a task that is not easily or generally accurately performed.